


Starrise

by maydei



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cas!Lucifer, Chuck is God, Denial of Feelings, Education, Family Drama, Implied Lucifer/Sam Winchester, M/M, Post-Series, Season/Series 11, Season/Series 11 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 14:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6960235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maydei/pseuds/maydei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer does not learn the value of humanity in a day. The grandest rise is after the fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> I started screaming about my feelings on tumblr and felt I should cross-post them here. The second chapter is a little more disjointed, but I tried. [Reblog here.](http://lucmorningstar.tumblr.com/post/144364080847/i-put-you-in-the-cage-to-keep-amara-out-you)

“I put you in the Cage to keep Amara out, you know,” Chuck said, long after Sam and Dean had gone to sleep that night. 

Lucifer had paced the bunker, equal parts furious and curious, for hours. Now, though, he had settled into a prickly and uncomfortable silent state, perched more than sitting in a chair, casting narrow-eyed glances at Chuck. He did the same now, the face that Chuck now thought of as purely Castiel’s (no longer Jimmy Novak’s) twisted with spite that could belong to none other than the trespasser folded inside. 

“It was punishment, yeah,” Chuck admitted, uncomfortable, as he sipped at his beer. “Maybe that was wrong. I still don’t know if—if what I did, concerning you, was right. But it was supposed to keep her out of your head. So it would just be—just be you. So you could have time to think.”

“It wasn’t a _time out,”_ Lucifer spat, hunched in on himself, baring his teeth like an animal. A scared, cornered animal, and an angry one—but one that had been bent that way by years of loneliness and pain. It hurt to look at him sometimes, to see his furious light so broken and dimmed. “It was _solitary confinement_. For _eons._ ”

“It was supposed to get you ready,” Chuck said in a sigh, and turned his face away. Angry as Lucifer was, he could no more hurt Chuck in this state than he could hurt Amara. Besides, it wasn’t the physical that made Lucifer a threat, here. It was the psychological, the emotional. His greatest failure, his most bitter, personified and laid out before him.

Lucifer’s lip curled. “For what?”

Chuck sighed and set the half-finished bottle on the atlas table. “For Sam.”

Lucifer twitched. Whether it was a fight or flight response, Chuck couldn’t be sure. But he knew that it had gotten a reaction, and… that was heartening, actually. Because it meant that above all, Lucifer still cared.

Somewhere inside, Lucifer cared about Sam Winchester.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Chuck looked toward the ceiling, and considered his wording carefully before he proceeded. “I always meant for you to have one another. After your… experience, I had hoped that seeing a kindred spirit, so to speak, reflected in a human, would make you understand.”

“Understand _what?”_ Lucifer snarled. His borrowed arms were clutched tightly around himself, and Chuck knew that if they were… _home_ , he would see Lucifer’s many, once-glorious wings drawn just as tightly around himself, a web of protection. Lucifer could never hide his feelings from Chuck or from his brothers. He was always the most sensitive, the easiest to read and interpret. Michael had been like stone, but Lucifer—he had always been fire. 

“Why I made them. _How_ I made them.” Chuck reached for his beer, and took a sip. He considered Lucifer, what he had once been, and his sad state left a bitter aftertaste in Chuck’s mouth that had nothing to do with the brew. “I looked at you.”

Lucifer twitched again, but this time clear fury bloomed over Castiel’s face. “No.”

“You were so bright, once,” Chuck said. “So pure. In your love, in your joy. In your anger, and in your sorrow. You were so different from the others, even Raphael and Gabriel, who came after. When I made the humans, I was trying to make more like you. So when you hated them…” he sighed. “I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s said we conflict with those most like ourselves.”

“It’s not true,” Lucifer said, and stood in a sweep—moved further away. A hard truth that he couldn’t face, but that Chuck finally knew he needed to. Before he himself was gone. Before Lucifer would never know… and he deserved to know.

“I knew then, after what you did to Eve—when you made her into Lilith—and when you chose Cain and Abaddon for your own, that I would someday make Sam. And Dean, of course. But Dean was a lesson for Michael that your brother wasn’t capable of learning. But you, Lucifer. You could. I knew you could. I knew if I could get my sister our of your head, get you away from her lies, that Sam would be able to help you. And he did, didn’t he? Just not… not entirely the way I wanted.” Chuck looked at him with a melancholy tilt of his head; a familial trait, a behavioral one, passed on unknowingly from Father to sons. 

Lucifer recoiled; of course he did. He wasn’t ready, and he never would be, not on his own. Chuck could see that now. 

“What you did to him,” Lucifer said, his voice tight. “All those things, the life he lived—”

“After my time,” Chuck admitted. “I never set out to hurt them, any of them. I just… set things up. What happened to Sam and Dean was much more Azazel and the demons than it ever was my own hand. You should know that. I never wanted Sam to suffer. I just… knew that he would.” Chuck set his beer down and rubbed his hands over his face, a long, drawn-out motion filled with sadness and regret. “He’s your echo, Lucifer. He was always going to suffer. He could have lived a perfect life and still suffered within his soul; he was never going to be whole and happy on his own. Dean was a balm, like Michael was for you, but you—you two. Sam’s Lucifer. Lucifer’s Sam. I had hoped…”

“You… _hurt_ him,” Lucifer said quietly, finally still. “…to teach _me_ a lesson?”

“No,” Chuck said, sad and patient, but he stood then anyway. “I didn’t. But you learned some of it, didn’t you?” He pointed at Lucifer, wished he even had the _capacity_ to just… enlighten. And he could, but what good would that be? “You’re angry! You’re angry at the thought that I would hurt him to get to you, and Lucifer, that’s _exactly_ it. He’s you, you’re him—he’s yours, you’re his! Protecting him, protecting _all_ of them. _Loving_ him, and by extension loving _yourself_ … the way that I love you.” Chuck’s conviction faltered, then, his stride interrupted by the strength of his sorrow, his profound emotion. “Protective, and gentle, and kind. But strong, so strong. Terrifying. Enough to overcome the Darkness’ hold on you. Enough that you would be… be healed, and that you could make peace with yourself, and with your brothers. That you could enjoy the Earth, all of you, together with them—and you, together with Sam. But I… misjudged. To think that the… pain of what… _happened_ to you, could be erased. That your love for him could smooth over your… _hatred_ of me.”

“He hated me,” Lucifer said softly, so softly. “Because of what you did, and the stories you told to _them_. And then he locked me up, just like you. He wasn’t different, he was _never_ … he was _you_ , not me.” Lucifer turned his back to hide the pain on his borrowed face, and though he hid his expression, he failed to hide his hurt.

“But it was Michael that hurt him in the Cage, wasn’t it?” Chuck asked, though not unkindly. “You were angry with Sam, but you couldn’t do that to yourself, Lucifer, and I know you couldn’t do it to him. And now you know that he saw too much of you. So you _let_ him believe it was you that hurt him, so you’ll never have to let him close ever again. Because you could never say no if he asked, could you? So you made sure that in never telling, he never would.”

“Stop it.”

“That in saying those unkind things to him, you would keep him away from you. And in keeping him away, you would stay weak and broken. A punishment to yourself, and in part a punishment to him. But you never believed it was he who failed, Lucifer, I know you didn’t. You blame yourself for his wounds. And you fear that in setting things straight, you’ll damage him more.”

Lucifer turned on a dime, a broken thing plagued by suffering and pain. “I said _stop.”_

Chuck took a step toward him, torn between sympathy for Lucifer’s plight and pain of his own at the state of his creation, his broken son. “Your silence is your only prison now,” Chuck said. “I could build you a new vessel, one that would hold. You would be free to stay, to learn from Sam and experience life here, like Castiel does. You’re no big fan of humans as a whole, but I know you love this planet, Lucifer. Is punishing yourself worth letting Amara take it, the universe, take Sam?”

Lucifer lashed out, a furious fling of Castiel’s arm sending the map table and Chuck’s unfinished beer flying through the air, shattering against the concrete floor and sending glass flying all over the room. Down the hallway, Chuck felt as much as heard Sam jolt awake, heart racing and combat-ready. 

Lucifer, bitter and uncertain, stared at the wreck for a long series of seconds that, to two celestial beings, stretched on for a profound yet inexplicably small eternity. 

Sam’s footsteps echoed as he ran to the map room, taking in the mess for only a moment before, with a blink, table and beer was restored to exactly the way it was.

The fact that this made him startle, even after all this time and everything he had seen, was somehow inexplicably funny to Chuck. But the understanding and uncomfortably nostalgic look on Sam’s face was anything but. 

“I, uh,” Sam said, disheveled and awkward. “Didn’t mean to intrude. I just. You know. Um.” 

“No harm, no foul,” Chuck said. He noted that Lucifer stared at Sam until exactly one heartbeat before Sam looked at him. 

“I don’t know what you expected,” Lucifer snapped, and turned away from them both. “Bringing me here, with _him_.” 

Which of them that was directed at, even Chuck could not tell.

“You’re our best chance,” Sam said, quiet and contrite. He didn’t sound half as afraid as he probably should, though he sounded twice as old. “And this, I mean. Put us together, and there’s always an uncomfortable family reunion bound to happen, right?” The joke fell flat; nothing could be funny when said in a voice that sad. “Like, every time we’re in the same room—Michael, Gabriel, Castiel. This.”

“Sam,” Lucifer said, and didn’t turn to face them. “Go back to sleep. You need your rest. Your day was long. You almost died.”

“So did you,” Sam said. His eyes fell from Lucifer’s back to the floor. 

Even now, with their history stretched to the breaking point between them, Sam Winchester still cared just as much as Lucifer did. That was so incredibly… _Sam_. Chuck couldn’t help the sad tilt of a private smile. 

“Don’t worry,” Lucifer scoffed. “Your Castiel is perfectly safe.”

“I wasn’t just talking about Cas,” Sam said.

If Chuck ever had to choose another son to bring peace to the Earth, he could think of none better than Sam Winchester.

“Boys,” he said quietly, and finally, both turned to look. “I think we could all use some rest. Sam, no need to worry. Lucifer, just… think about what I said.”

Lucifer, tucked behind Castiel’s eyes, was baleful and contrary as he was hesitant, thoughtful.

Sam nodded finally, and retreated down the hall. Chuck watched Lucifer watch him go.

“One way or another,” Chuck said. “You will have to make a choice. And the longer you wait, the more likely it will be that Sam makes it for you.”

Lucifer remained silent.

“There are guest rooms down the hall and to the left,” Chuck offered as peaceably as he could. “Or there are no shortage of books, if you prefer. The Winchester Gospels included. Not my best work, to be honest, but. If you wanted some perspective.” 

Chuck picked up his beer as he turned to go, intending on resting as well as he could before he gave any attempt at the uncomfortable communication another go.

“Father,” Lucifer said. His voice cracked on the word; it had been thousands of years since he’d last said it in any capacity to its intended recipient. 

Chuck paused. 

“Without… without Michael, or Raphael or Gabriel. Is there even a chance?”

“I don’t know,” Chuck answered honestly. He swirled what was left around the bottle, and drained the last of it in one swallow. “But after all they’ve managed to do on their own, despite all we’ve done to them… perhaps we owe it to them to try.”

Chuck left then, and considered heavily that despite his many failings, perhaps John Winchester had been a better father and raised better sons than He ever had.


	2. After, and Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can reblog this section [here.](http://lucmorningstar.tumblr.com/post/144830878857/a-sort-of-follow-up-to-this-lucifer-gets-his-own) Sorry for the mixing tense, I don't even know.

Lucifer gets his own vessel from Chuck, one that will hold him for the long run. Sam and Dean no longer need him around to fight Amara because one way or another, the fight is over, and Chuck still can’t let Lucifer come back to Heaven (not that Lucifer even wants to, considering how reviled he is there, and probably always will be), so he leaves.

He wanders, aimlessly at first. He’s wanted nowhere, and he hates everyone, but he doesn’t get tired, and he doesn’t know how to drive, and he has all the time in the world, so he walks. He has a wallet in his pocket with fake papers and IDs, because Chuck can make people out of nowhere, but the Winchesters can make identities, so they did. Didn’t ask what he was going to do with it, and he wouldn’t have had an answer, anyway.

He doesn’t run the fifty states, but he walks them. Sam doesn’t want him, and the only person in the world Lucifer had ever held any regard for was Sam, anyway. Of course, that time isn’t… well, it isn’t gone, but Sam doesn’t need him, now, and Lucifer figures maybe he doesn’t need Sam, either. Not right now. And with God back in the picture, Lucifer can’t hurt anyone, anyway. 

So he stops at bars, and he drinks when he wants to. Has a little cash. Stealing from humans is laughably easy, but he isn’t malignant about it—he’s too tired to be petty about things, anymore. Mostly, he takes cash from those that look like they can afford it, but he doesn’t do it often. Just enough to try a little food here and there, and to drink water, and to get a new, used pair of shoes at the thrift stores when the soles drop out of his last pair. His feet don’t get tired, but rubber doesn’t hold up quite as well as an archangel.

He hikes. He walks through the woods and gets weird looks from those who see he has no supplies. He vehemently rejects charity at first, until he realizes that sometimes people just… want to help. He’s sore about saying the words _thank you_ , but he learns to say them when someone offers a water bottle, a compass, a utility knife. He uses the word _sorry_ the first time he trips and runs into someone, spills out before he can stop it. Smiles for the first time when a stranger’s dog runs up on him on the Appalachian Trail and licks his hand and wags its tail at him, and knows that he’s changed in that moment, for an animal to not be afraid of him. 

But he keeps walking. Takes in the sunrises in the morning, drops of dew on the leaves, learns the difference between wet and dry, and which he prefers. He observes the rain, the fog, the snow, and learns how to talk to people without making them look nervous about it. He learns when to identify that his vessel needs a haircut, or to sit down, or to close his eyes—these things don’t really impact Lucifer greatly, but they make his life a little bit easier. 

He learns from humans. He learns how to speak their languages, to play their instruments. He learns how to write the language of the universe in letters and numbers, and how to take concepts he’s always understood and turn it into strings of mathematical equations that boggle minds when he tries to talk about them. He finds a professor from a university in a bar in Boston and has a six-hour conversation about dark matter before the man insists that Lucifer apply as a student to MIT. Since he doesn’t need to sleep and always understands and always remembers, he gets tired of the human track. It takes him three months to understand how to use a computer, but only another six to finish four years of undergrad and a Master’s degree in theoretical physics. 

He finishes his PhD in a year, only because he’s limited to lab hours, and has to prove on the physical plane, in a way that humans can understand, the rules his Father had written into being before the Earth existed. He nearly gets arrested by the FBI when he builds a particle accelerator in his on-campus housing dorm, and the RA thought it was a bomb. Lucifer doesn’t know it, but he’s on multiple domestic and international terror watch lists from that point on. 

He likes academia, but he grows tired of Boston, so he decides to go to the West Coast. When his colleagues ask how he’ll get there, he tells them he plans on walking. This is how, in a Boston suburb, in his professor’s Lexus, Lucifer learns how to drive a car.

Driving is much faster than walking, though it was as confining as Castiel had once mentioned—however, it allowed moving personal belongings in a way that wasn’t questioned, and Lucifer found he liked that. Driving also allows Lucifer to go to and from academic conferences as he pleases, as well as easily scaling mountains, and visiting beautiful places. Lucifer understands within a month of getting his own car why Sam and Dean always liked the Impala so much.

He learns mechanics in Illinois when his car breaks down, and ends up spending two weeks there learning to take apart and reconstruct everything about most motorized vehicles from the ground up. He builds his first solar-powered engine a month later when he gets tired of filling his car up with gasoline. When he reaches California, a man sees his modified car, and teaches him how to file a patent, and how to set up a bank account. In a number of months, he’s sold his design to GMC, and Lucifer never has to steal again. He’s awarded an honorary PhD in Mechanical Engineering from CalTech by the end of the year. 

Five years after leaving the Bunker, Lucifer has a condo, a thriving career in Silicon Valley, and four doctorates (the latter two being in Human Psychology and Music & Performing Arts). One week after the five year mark, Chuck knocks on his door.

He looks the same. A little wary as always, and honestly surprised when Lucifer’s rescue cat goes shooting out from under the kitchen table and into the depths of his home, startled and threatened by the presence of The Almighty in the entryway. 

“You have a cat?” he says. 

Lucifer replies evenly, “I thought you knew everything.” He turns, and Chuck follows him in.

“Apparently not,” Chuck says. “What’s its name?”

“His name is Friedrich Nietzsche,” Lucifer answers. “Do you want a glass of water?”

They talk. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s civil. Lucifer has pictures on his walls—some are artwork, some are photographs of him and his colleagues. Some are his diplomas. Some are academic awards. Chuck looks at each and every one of them, but looks longest at the ones where Lucifer is with others, sometimes with a casual arm slung around the people he can now call friends. He’s smiling in almost all of them, and in the ones he isn’t, he’s looking, gesturing, talking. 

Chuck goes quiet as he looks at them, and Lucifer doesn’t push. He wonders at the bittersweet things his Father must be feeling, but Lucifer has no children of his own, so he doesn’t know for sure how it feels to be a parent. Especially not a parent on the same scale the way that Chuck is. 

“Things are better, now, in Heaven,” Chuck says after a while. “I came here to… to tell you that you can come home, if you want.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d rather stay,” Lucifer says. He’s surprised to learn that he means it.

“Yeah,” Chuck says. “That’s what Castiel said, too.”

“Will you…” and Lucifer hesitates. It’s to his own credit that he’s thought about this for a long time, and has the courage to ask. “Will you please… bring Michael home? Now that things are better?”

Chuck turns. He stares. Lucifer’s gaze is even and steady, and he’s not angry. Michael never deserved the Cage. Neither did Lucifer, but. Lucifer understands now, how looking long into an abyss can change a person.

“You’re different,” Chuck says. 

“So are you,” Lucifer answers.

“I think I’m really just the same,” Chuck replies, but this time, Lucifer doesn’t believe him. 

Chuck agrees to bring Michael home. Lucifer decides to stay.

A year later, Lucifer has a second cat named J. Robert Oppenheimer, and is halfway through a fifth doctorate in Molecular Biology, because if you can’t beat them, learn about them. He’ll admit that it’s that natural pride kicking in with the desire to take what his father made, and make them better. But _really_ better. To cure them of the bombs his Father had left behind in their genetic code. But rather than a goal out of spite, it feels like something better.

On a lazy Saturday evening, he gets another visitor. 

It’s Sam.

Lucifer wears glasses now, and understands how to pretend to be human. Before Sam says anything to him, he stares for a while at Lucifer’s pressed button-down and khaki slacks, and his socked feet that have a calico hairball stuck to the toe. Lucifer holds open the door, and leaves it open behind him when he enters, and closes only the screen door instead, because he knows that a clear window to the outside will feel less threatening to Sam than the heavy door of his condo. And the weather is nice, anyway; the cats like to watch the birds.

He gets Sam a beer without asking, and rather than opening it himself, hands the opener to Sam with the bottle. It’s sealed; it’s safe. Little, non-threatening gestures that say _trust me_ even though Lucifer knows he never will. Not after everything.

Sam is silent for a long time, even longer than Chuck was at first. Lucifer doesn’t mind, and doesn’t push. He doesn’t linger, either. He leaves Sam alone in his kitchen and heads to the living room, back to the medical journal he was reading on his laptop before Sam knocked on his door. He thinks that after this, he might try his hand at actual medical school. He doesn’t know if it’s undue pride to think of all the lives he might be able to save with his superior sight and preternatural senses. 

After a while, he knows Sam is watching him. He waits patiently, but is candid when Oppenheimer comes to him, yowling for scritches. He and Nietzsche share a propensity for dramatics, but Oppenheimer was a little more demanding for attention. He picks up his cat and holds him on his lap while he cross-references the bi-annual journal with a supplementary article, and jots notes in shorthand into an open notebook sitting nearby. 

“You almost make that look normal,” Sam says, and it’s the first thing he’s said to Lucifer in more than five years. 

“It’s my life now,” Lucifer says simply. “This is my normal.”

“And you’re happy like this?”

Lucifer doesn’t know that he’s ever been happy in his life. “It passes the time. Academia keeps me busy.”

“It’s cheating.”

“My interest is genuine.” Lucifer shrugs, and puts his cat down. He looks over at Sam, and notes the sparse strands of gray in his hair, and the new scars on his hands and around his hairline, where he’s doubtlessly spent the years that have passed being thrown to Hell and back by all sorts of creatures, alongside his brother. “I want to give back as much as I’ve taken. I figure I have the time.”

“Your achievements won’t last,” Sam says, and sounds a little snide. “People will notice you aren’t aging. You’ll have to give up all the things you’ve gotten.”

Lucifer shrugs. “Maybe they won’t remember me as me. But the things I do will carry forward. They’ll last, even when I don’t.” He makes another note, another thought that’s been carrying on in the back of his conscious mind, always operating on more planes than humans could fathom, let alone follow. He doesn’t really care if Sam has come here to be angry. Lucifer is too old, too tired, too busy to be angry anymore. Though the thought of Sam being angry at him doesn’t bother him, the thought of Sam staying angry in general makes him sigh. Sam deserves more peace than an angry life.

“You’re not how I remember,” Sam says to him. He’s still hovering in the doorway, frowning just a little. That morally superior look is gone, and Lucifer wonders if it were genuine in the first place, or an attempt to push his buttons and elicit a response. He expects that Sam wouldn’t be here now if Chuck hadn’t spoken to him, though the reason why escapes him. Humans like to test things, many times at their own risk, especially those things they don’t believe. Lucifer thinks that this, _he_ might be one of those things.

After all, how could Sam of all people possibly believe that Lucifer could change?

“Michael came to me,” Sam says then. “To Cas first. Said that you had _asked God_ to bring him home.”

Lucifer doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what Sam would want him to say, anyway. He looks up, looks out the window to the sunset spilling across the sky. He’s glad for the confirmation that Michael is out of the Cage. He wonders, now that Chuck has the time and resources, if his Father will bring back Gabriel and Raphael. He finds he doesn’t know if he _wants_ to know. 

“And then he. Told me…” Sam fades out into silence. And then Lucifer hears his footsteps, as he finally enters the living room, and sits in the chair across from Lucifer directly. Lucifer can feel the pressure of Sam’s gaze on him, and meets it because he knows Sam wants him to. “He told me the truth. About the Cage. About what he did.”

Lucifer closes his eyes. He would have been just as happy to let Sam carry on thinking that Lucifer was the real monster of the worlds. But Michael, of course, who hadn’t even confronted him yet—of course, noble Michael would be on his own journey, to confront his own sins and make amends. 

“He said it was him that tortured me. And that he liked to pretend to be you when he did it. And that you… didn’t.”

Lucifer still says nothing, though he does open his eyes and look at Sam again. Sam’s jaw is set, and his eyes are determined, just like Lucifer remembers in Detroit. But this time, there is none of the fear. 

“He says you never touched me. And you know what? That’s what Chuck said, too. Except you let me believe that you did. You _wanted_ me to believe that you did.”

Lucifer shrugs, though it isn’t the easy thing it usually is, because his indifference is a thin veneer over his resignation. “You always had faith in Michael, in my Father. You prayed to them, once. I didn’t see why I should take that away from you.”

“No,” Sam says, short and even. “That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?” Lucifer asks, and levels Sam with a neutral look. 

“You told me once. All sorts of things. Things I didn’t want to believe, and things that terrified me, but—things. About how we were connected. The sort of things that Amara told Dean. And I never realized until I was on the outside looking in, because she _meant_ those things. And Dean still hasn’t been the same since she’s been gone. Those things you told me—they were the _same things_ she told him. And if she meant them, I think maybe you meant them, too.” Sam leans forward, his elbows on his knees, his fingers folded together over the beer bottle. “And after, I thought they were lies because I thought that, since you hurt me, they never could have been true. But you didn’t hurt me, did you? Which means that never lying to me, never tricking me—that was _real_.”

Lucifer breathes out through his nose. 

Sam’s eyes narrow. “You never wanted me to know, did you? After all the things you said, you gave up on me.”

“No,” Lucifer says simply. “I’ve never given up on you. But I gave up on being with you. You didn’t need me then. You don’t need me now.”

He stands, and closes the laptop. The journal can wait, and will still be there later. Lucifer doesn’t know where he wants to go, but he knows that he needs to move, because he doesn’t want Sam to keep looking at him like that. So he goes back to the kitchen and gets himself a glass of water, and tries not to feel cornered when Sam follows him. 

“You haven’t said anything about _you_ not needing _me,”_ Sam says. 

Lucifer takes a sip. He sets the glass down. “I know better than to ask.” He glances at the pictures on his fridge, of himself with his colleagues. At their weddings, with their children. Lucifer has a godson, now. He will never admit to Sam or Dean or Michael or Chuck how much he adores that child. He has a life here, one that has let him rebuild himself. He thinks that he likes himself better as Doctor Nick Lucian Foster than he ever liked himself as Lucifer.

Sam sees the picture. Before Lucifer can protest, he’s standing next to him and taking the photo off the fridge. He holds it in his hands and stares at it for a long time, of Lucifer standing next to the couple, holding their newborn son. 

Lucifer breathes. So does Sam. Then he asks, “What’s his name?”

“Oliver Rennert,” Lucifer says. “Firstborn son of Doctors Jeremy and Kate Rennert. Jeremy is a colleague of mine in Mechanical Engineering and works for a subsidiary of Google. Kate is a professor of Medieval Literature. They’re good people.”

Sam nods and carefully places the picture back on the fridge. He looks at all the rest, from saved wedding invitations to group candids. 

“You’re a good person, too,” Sam says. Lucifer shakes his head, and Sam turns to face him. “I looked you up. I’ve been following your research for a while. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop the second you left and it never did. Half the things you’ve written I don’t even understand, but I know they’re big. But none of that matters, not compared to this.” Sam gestures at the life on the fridge in pictures, the frames on the walls. “You made something. You made it yourself. And it’s _good,_ Lucifer. It’s good.”

Lucifer closes his eyes. 

He hasn’t heard his name in years.

Sam touches his arm. Lucifer stays very still.

“I’m going to Stanford Law,” Sam says then. “Dean’s doing Forensic Science at CalState East Bay. Cas is working on some research project tracking bee colonies—I don’t even really know, truth be told.”

“What about hunting?” Lucifer asks, and opens his eyes. The thought that Sam is so close, lives so close by, and has _been_ so close for a while, is a thought he can’t even fully process. 

“There will always be hunters,” Sam replies. “And there’ll always be hunting. But Dean broke his leg last year and I convinced him to give this a try. We’re getting too old to keep at it without dying. And there’s still stuff I want to do. I just… I know now, that Dean’s always gonna be with me to do it. We both want to help people. There are other ways to do it.”

Lucifer nods. He looks at the glass of water and just… processes. 

“I’m glad,” he says finally, and means it. “That you’re getting what you wanted, Sam.”

Sam nods. “It’s taken a while to figure out what that was,” he admits. 

The moment stretches. Lucifer waits. 

Sam huffs. 

“You should visit,” Sam says, and pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and pushes it into Lucifer’s hand. 

Lucifer stares at it, then back at Sam. “You would want that?”

“Yes,” Sam says, and looks him straight in the eyes as he does. He doesn’t flinch. 

Lucifer doesn’t breathe. 

He looks down. “What about Castiel? I hope that… my presence didn’t… adversely affect him.”

“Cas is fine. In fact, this was Cas’ idea,” Sam says. He looks back at the pictures on Lucifer’s fridge. “I wasn’t sure. But now I am. We’re having dinner tomorrow at the house—Sunday lasagna. I want you to come.” He nods, almost to himself, and turns back to Lucifer. “Bring more pictures of your friends, and of Oliver. Okay?”

Lucifer nods in return. He looks at the paper in his hand, at Sam’s handwriting. He doesn’t know how he feels yet, but he reaches around Sam to attach it to the fridge with a magnet, right next to Oliver’s picture. 

Sam smiles. “How does six-thirty sound?”


End file.
